The Freud Reader

Arguably the most comprehensive selection of Freud’s work, The Freud Reader spans his career, from the early case histories to his later theories, and including essays on art, literature, politics, religion and culture.

[Freud] was possessed of exceptional literary gifts. There can be no question that he was a great writer: to read him is to be beguiled by him... His influence on all of us was enormous, and it would be as impossible to return to a pre-Freudian way of thinking as to return to a pre-heliocentric theory of the solar system

Peter Gay's first volume of his two-volume work, The Enlightenment: An Interpretation, won a National Book Award, and his bestselling Freud: A Life for Our Time was finalist for the National Book Award. His other numerous works include studies on the eighteenth century, Voltaire's Politics and The Party of Humanity, and essays on the writing of history, Style in History and Art and Act. The recipient of Guggenheim and Rockefeller Foundation Fellowships, and Overseas fellowship at Churchill College, Cambridge, and the Heineken Prize for Historical Study, Peter Gay is Sterling Professor of History at Yale University.

Freudian thought permeates virtually every aspect of 20th century life. To understand Freud is to explore not only his scientific papers but also his vivid writings on art, literature, politics, religion and culture. 
 
The Freud Reader is the first single-volume work to bring together in accessible form Freud's ideas as a scientist, humanist, doctor and philosopher. It contains fifty-one key texts, spanning Freud's entire career from early case histories through his work on dreams, essays on sexuality, and on to his late writings, including Civilisation and Its Discontents. 
 
Peter Gay, a leading scholar of Freud, has put together this selection to provide a full portrait of Freud's thought. He has also written clear introductions to the selected texts and a general introduction which places the man and his work in the context of his time and culture.

Peter Gay

Beautifully written, wide-ranging and psychologically acute, Modernism: The Lure of Heresy is a celebration of the subversive energies that decisively transformed art and culture in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. At once bracingly intelligent and elegiac, Gay's magisterial book is richly rewarding for anyone who wants to understand the fractured world we have all inherited

Superbly researched and well recounted. The extent to which many [modernists] "sold out" to their wealthy patrons, adopting the values they once scorned, makes for some engrossing reading

Highly readable, well-illustrated...an intelligent and exciting account of creative individuals and the times in which they worked... An enormous achievement

Written... with a polymathematical verve which carried me with him to the end

An absorbing account of how international artistic rebellion became mainstream and lucrative

Peter Gay has outdone himself. In his hands Modernism adds up to more than the sum of its subversive, sensational, unsettling parts. This is cultural history of the highest magnitude, a work as astute in its analyses as it is massive in its ambition. And as ever, it is written with stunning lucidity. A splendid, invigorating achievement

A wonderful book. You can be sure that students and journalists and teachers will be stealing from Modernism for years to come. Bravo!

The Lure of Heresy - From Baudelaire to Beckett and Beyond

In his most ambitious endeavour since Freud, acclaimed cultural historian Peter Gay traces and explores the rise of Modernism in the arts, the cultural movement that heralded and shaped the modern world, dominating western high culture for over a century. 
 
He traces the revolutionary path of modernism from its Parisian origins to its emergence as the dominant cultural movement in world capitals such as Berlin and New York, presenting along the way a thrilling pageant of hereitcs that includes Oscar Wilde, Pablo Picasso, James Joyce, Walter Gropius and Any Warhol. The result is a work unique in its breadth and brilliance. 
 
Lavishly illustrated, Modernism is a superb achievement by one of our greatest historians.

Peter Gay

Praise for Modernism

Beautifully written, wide-ranging and psychologically acute, Modernism: The Lure of Heresy is a celebration of the subversive energies that decisively transformed art and culture in the late nineteenth and tw ...

Superbly researched and well recounted. The extent to which many [modernists] "sold out" to their wealthy patrons, adopting the values they once scorned, makes for some engrossing reading

Highly readable, well-illustrated...an intelligent and exciting account of creative individuals and the times in which they worked... An enormous achievement

Beautifully written, wide-ranging and psychologically acute, Modernism: The Lure of Heresy is a celebration of the subversive energies that decisively transformed art and culture in the late nineteenth and tw ...

Superbly researched and well recounted. The extent to which many [modernists] "sold out" to their wealthy patrons, adopting the values they once scorned, makes for some engrossing reading

Highly readable, well-illustrated...an intelligent and exciting account of creative individuals and the times in which they worked... An enormous achievement

Beautifully written, wide-ranging and psychologically acute, Modernism: The Lure of Heresy is a celebration of the subversive energies that decisively transformed art and culture in the late nineteenth and tw ...

Superbly researched and well recounted. The extent to which many [modernists] "sold out" to their wealthy patrons, adopting the values they once scorned, makes for some engrossing reading

Highly readable, well-illustrated...an intelligent and exciting account of creative individuals and the times in which they worked... An enormous achievement

Books by Peter Gay

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